Researched and archived by Shane Speal. Speal's book, Poor Man's Guitar will be released October 2018 by Fox Chapel Publishing. More info at www.PoorMansGuitar.com.
In the 1970s, a fanzine called Resophonic Echoes appeared, celebrating all things related to Dobros and resonator guitars.
It featured photocopied patents from dobros, histories of the instruments and interviews with the premier players at the time.
The May 1978 issue also featured a short article on how to build a cigar box guitar. The author, Melvyn J. Reiter gives a simple, if not incomplete, set of plans that call for a neck block inside the cigar box and an internal dowel rod to act as a stabilizer. No details are given on scale length, except for suggesting the use of a ukulele or 3/4 scale guitar as fret templates.
Reiter was known for short scale instruments, and even built the world's smallest guitar, which was covered in the New York Times the previous year:
Inspired by an entry about the world's largest guitar in the Guinness Book of Records, Melvyn T. Reiter in Brooklyn get to work to make the smallest guitar in the world. The whole thing is under 15 inches and the frets are too small to work with the fingers, but they can be managed with a steel chording bar. - New York Times, Jan 2, 1977
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